In more than 40 episodes spanning 75 years, equity and bond fund investors have defied predictions that they would panic and spark crises. Yet banking regulators won’t let go of their “run” scenario. Why?

Weber, who is 41, is in his second term as an MEP and has been a deputy chairman of the EPP group since 2009.

He is a member of the leadership group of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). MEPs from the EPP are expected to elect a new leader and deputy leaders on 4 June, when they reconvene after the election.

An EPP source said that Weber was a unifying candidate because he was not closely associated with divisive policies, such as austerity in the eurozone, and was a less outspoken federalist than the incumbent, Joseph Daul.

Daul is expected to be confirmed as the president of the EPP at a party congress in Dublin today (6 March) and plans to step aside as group leader once the new Parliament meets. Daul has been acting party leader since November, following the death of Wilfried Martens, and will manage the procedure to appoint a successor as group leader.

Weber’s main competitor appears to have been Alain Lamassoure, a French MEP who chairs the Parliament’s budgets committee. But Lamassoure, a European affairs veteran and a former French cabinet minister, is hampered by the weakness of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France’s main centre-right party. Weber’s CSU, by contrast, is expected to do well in the elections in May (as it did in the last national elections, in September).

Weber is known in the EPP for his work on justice and home affairs issues, but he has also gained respect from other groups for his calm and business-like manner.

His power base is his role as chairman of the regional CSU in lower Bavaria, the second-most important region in Bavaria, and his seat on the CSU leadership council that meets every Monday in the Bavarian capital, Munich.

MEPs from the EPP group plan to meet on 4 June formally to constitute the group, although few changes are expected to its composition. Both parties that emerged in Italy from a split in the People of Freedom party of Silvio Berlusconi are expected to remain in the EPP group. The main newcomers might be the Romanian National Liberal Party of Crin Antonescu, which has broken away from the governing coalition. But the party could equally join the liberal group in the European Parliament.

The EPP is the largest group in the current European Parliament but is forecast to trade places with the second-biggest group, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats.